An hour’s drive from Hangzhou city centre takes you into the heart of Moganshan, a bamboo covered natural haven once the destination of choice for wealthy Shanghainese making a summer getaway from the urban heat. This area has seen something of a revival in recent years, with holidaymakers from Shanghai, Hangzhou and other nearby cities looking for a convenient and relaxing getaway.
Naked Retreats is known to many already, whether you have spent time there for a company team building exercise, went on an impromptu weekend holiday or simply heard of their provocative yet catchy name. Their homey villa and village-orientated living style is a world away from the latest development from this company. Nestled into the hillsides and treetops, burrowed into the ground… the impressive structures that comprise Naked Stables are in the process of completion. The scale of the operation is simply massive compared to anything that Moganshan has seen before and founder and CEO Grant Horsfield sometimes looks a little bewildered at the project he has taken on.
Set on 60 pristine acres amidst bamboo forests in its own valley, surrounded by a large reservoir, tea plantations and small local farming villages, Naked Stables Private Reserve is set to open to an awed public in October this year. 121 beautiful rooms make up this retreat, you can choose from tree top villas or free standing “earth-huts” all of them perfectly integrated into the valley like they had grown from the ground. Naked Retreat’s general manager Doug, who took us on the tour around the retreat in his golf cart, beamed proudly at each and every one of these structures, obviously excited at being a part of such a groundbreaking operation.
Grant and his wife Delphine Yip are a disarmingly down to earth yet, evidently, incredibly driven couple. Horsfield, who hails from South Africa, worked in China for several years in various executive positions before setting up Naked Retreats. He describes how much he missed the great outdoors his native Cape Town offered when stifled inside high-rise buildings holding board meetings and doing paperwork. Starting up Naked Retreats wasn’t something that Horsfi eld had originally planned to do, but a lucky revelation when lost on a mountain biking trip several years ago led to the opening of Naked Home Village. “There was no particular destination in mind, it was just any location that had nature and quiet,” Horsfi eld reveals, “I didn’t know where Moganshan was.” Despite not setting out to fi nd the location that would become the future home of his Naked venture, Horsfi eld realised that Moganshan was the place he wanted it to be the fi rst time he saw it. Despite once being glorifi ed as a retreat for Shanghai’s rich and famous, Moganshan has been largely off the radar in urban circles for quite some time before boutique companies, and particularly Naked Retreats, put it back onto the tourist map in the last decade. “There was a reason why it was an ideal retreat back then,” Delphine Yip points out, “the convenient location from Shanghai, the relatively cool weather and the beautiful nature, all these reasons are as true today as they were back then.”
Sixty acres of land sounds big on paper, but you have to go to Naked Stables to experience for yourself the shear scale of the project. For Yip, who has worked on large urban architectural projects all over China, the size of this build might have seemed reasonable, but to go from the single villa of Naked Home Village to the massive scale of Naked Stables seems quite a leap even for the audacious. Horsfi eld laughs and says “Can I just say that I didn’t quite realise what I was getting myself into? Seriously, before we were here there were no roads, it was only forest, so I started to go, oh look Delphine, wouldn’t it be great to have some villas here, and pool here?” Yip nods in agreement “You know, when you’re here before it all started, it was a forest in a bigger forest, so we thought, well… it’s not a big deal. It was once we started when we realised that, wow, this is heavy stuff.”
Modesty aside, the couple have their plans fi rmly in line and had discussed the project in great depth before it all started. “A friend of Ben Woods told me, look if you’re going to do this you really can’t have less than a hundred rooms for the business to be viable, and that number stuck in my mind,” Horsfi eld recalls, “But we never wanted to just build a big building with lots of rooms; to me that’s a waste of your location. From where I come from, buildings are almost always individual and that’s what I wanted for Moganshan.” Yip sees it as an ambitious but natural next step for the company “Naked Home Village has a lot of limitation, it was unique because it was in an existing village, but just because of the location and the size there was only so much we could do. Here, however, we feel like we can start from scratch and create all the experiences and amenities we want people to experience.” With all the amenities in the works for visitors to Naked Stables, the size of the place starts to make real sense. There is tea picking, wellness spas tucked into the hillside, an amphitheatre for live music and other performances, multiple swimming pools, a conference center, a large restaurant, children’s play areas and of course the horse stables.
Inspired by Africa’s game lodges, Horsfi eld and his wife both wanted to make sure that Naked Stables offers more than just a place to stay the night. Realising that people will come to Moganshan to engage with nature, they have built into the retreat many activities programs. A big draw of the Naked Stables will be the horses, Horsfi eld relates how he struck upon the idea when exploring the ancient footpaths of the mountain and realising that they would be ideal for horseback travel. Not only do Naked Retreats make maximum use of their land, they also make sure that the locals of Moganshan are an integral part of their operations. Over a hundred local villagers have been employed to work on the construction of the resort and when they open, they intend to train and employ local people as guides and resort staff. “We want to give back to the community here, and local people know this place best so it makes sense to employ them to work at the resort. Over the last two years of construction the villagers here have earned quite a bit of money from us. All in all it’s a mutually benefi cial partnership.”
Yip talks enthusiastically about adopting the local people’s mudwall building technique in the resort. Looking for innovative building materials and construction methods has been a central part of Naked Stable’s development. Everything here is designed to fi t with LEED standards and they aim to achieve the coveted LEED Platinum certifi cation. Should they do so, Naked Stables would be the fi rst resort in Asia to achieve such status. Does it affect the way they build? No doubt about it. “We have 70 buildings that are targeted to be LEED Platinum, and it has been a struggle! We did it because we have always ascribed to building this way but because LEED guidelines are designed for urban builds and not for rural builds like this, it has been a bit of a challenge to follow the rulebook.”
The treetop villas, impressive in every aspect from their size, decoration and amenities to the breathtaking view from every single window, are available for sale to private owners. The system works like this: when an owner is not staying in the villa, the villa goes into a pool of vacant rooms that can be rented out to holidaymakers. The money from the rental is then shared amongst the villa owners. Villa owners and visitors alike can enjoy all the amenities on site, from the Jacuzzi on the balcony, to the 880sqm wellness and spa center, to the three dining outlets that will open on the resort. The main restaurant is called Kikaboni (meaning ‘organic’ in Swahili), which will be able to seat 70 tables to the taste of Afro- Asian cuisine. The clubhouse will also have a café and serve sunset BBQs for guests whilst the poolside bar will serve drinks and light snacks, just in case you get hungry after your laps. Yoga classes will be held in the morning for anyone who wants to enjoy their meditation within the surrounds of a pristine bamboo forests.
Naked Stables is a truly ambitious venture, and the vision behind it is extraordinary. The attention to detail and effort that has been put into it is obvious even before the site is fully built. Horsfi eld spends most of his time onsite nowadays, putting in the extra manpower to push for an October fi nish. Yip is based in Shanghai with their daughter. Managing the building of a massive resort aside, Horsfi eld laments that one of the toughest challenges for him on this project has been the separation from his family. Judging by the looks of things though, his dedication and sacrifi ce will certainly more than pay off as the fi nal pieces of the construction fall into place and the resort readies itself for the infl ux of visitors and the acclaim they truly deserve.
